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Although he smiled and said he was indulging his hobby last week at the Ohio State Fair, Union
County hog farmer Curtis Burns wasn’t entirely comfortable huddled with dozens of farmers and
hundreds of pigs beneath the roof of the O’Neill Building.

Burns’ family farm lost thousands of pigs in January when porcine epidemic diarrhea virus, or
PEDv, tore through the operation.

PEDv spreads through feces, and in the O’Neill Building, where a constant stream of pigs was
being walked, weighed and washed, fecal material was always underfoot.

“It’s very scary,” said Burns, whose family runs a commercial pig farm. He then pointed to his
shirt, jeans and shoes. “None of this will come within 2 miles of our farm.”

Introduced into the United States in April 2013, PEDv has raged through most pork-producing
states, killing more than 7 million pigs, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

PEDv is the major contributor to a 5 percent decline in the U.S. hog herd, from 65.2 million
head a year ago to 62.1 million as of June 1, according to the USDA.

Ohio has seen a similar decline in herd size, from 2.13 million in June 2013 to 2 million this
past June.

More than 8,500 farms have been infected, including 362 in Ohio, said Dr. Tony Forshey, chief of
the Ohio Department of Agriculture’s Division of Animal Health.

“This is a superbug,” said Forshey, who has doctored pigs for 27 years in five states. “This is
the worst (digestive) tract virus I have seen in my career.”

PEDv is more common in Europe and Asia, according to the USDA. The virus is new to the U.S., so
the nation’s herd had no immunity.

Burns said that on his farm, it first hit a nursery, where piglets live after being weaned from
their mothers. Then it spread to other facilities and into adult pigs. The family had to shut down
their feed mill while the virus ran its course.

“We lost $100,000 just in closing the feed mill for a month,” Burns said. “You want to talk
about a kick in the shorts.”

The only good news is that the virus isn’t transferrable to people or other animals, and it
doesn’t affect food safety.

Instead, consumers felt the impact of the virus in their wallets. In July, the USDA raised its
estimate of the jump in consumer pork prices this year to 5.5 to 6.5 percent. Pork joins beef as
the food categories where prices are expected to increase the most.

The average retail price of bacon has increased 10 percent this year, to more than $6.10 a
pound. That’s the highest in more than 30 years.

Live-hog prices are at record highs, with the USDA predicting a 25 percent jump this year before
a slight decline in 2015. Companies such as Bob Evans Farms, known for its sausages, have seen
their bottom lines hollowed out in part by unforeseen price spikes attributed to a decline in the
number of hogs ready for market this year.

Bob Evans spent $22.6 million more than expected for pork in the past year because of the price
spike, according to its latest earnings report.

“This is a whole different ballgame,” said Gerald Morris, a retired hog farmer from Oxford,
Ohio. “It’s pretty bad.”

Morris remembers another intestinal virus, transmissible gastroenteritis, or TGE, that caused
havoc in pig operations in the 1980s.

“TGE wasn’t anything compared to this,” said Morris, who was at the state fair last week helping
his grandkids with their show pigs.

Although PEDv created a lot of headaches in the past year, it also pushed farmers to innovate
and better manage their farms.

Burns said his operation has never been so clean, or under such a microscope. The family tests
feed, soil, bedding, just about everything that could come into contact with a pig, Burns said.
Vehicles that come onto the property are sprayed with disinfectant.

Forshey, the state veterinarian, said, “Ohio’s pork producers are tightening down on
biosecurity. You don’t go from the fair to your home and go feed the pigs anymore.”

Biosecurity concerns were so heightened over the winter that they influenced farmers’ behavior
off their farm. If the aisles at a local grocery store looked dirty, said Trevor Kirkpatrick of
Washington Court House, his family avoided them.

“Everybody is a little more savvy about disease now,” said Kirkpatrick, whose family runs a hog
farm and breeding business.

Kirkpatrick’s family tried to prevent costly deaths by infecting their herd when the farm was
between litters of piglets, the age group that is most susceptible to the virus.

Adult pigs get sick but rarely die from PEDv. The idea was to let adult pigs build an immunity
that could be passed on to their offspring. The family’s herd weathered the illness without serious
losses, Kirkpatrick said.

Forshey said that tactic was popular during outbreaks of TGE because immunity almost always
passed down from mothers to piglets. But PEDv immunity doesn’t transfer as efficiently.

“What we really need is some sort of a live, oral vaccine that will give immunity to the
piglets,” Forshey said, “but we’re probably at least a year, 18 months away from that.”

The USDA licensed a vaccine last month, but according to Forshey, it doesn’t contain live virus,
and it is delivered by injection. Both features make it less effective.

In June, the agency earmarked $26.2 million for responding to PEDv, including $3.9 million for
vaccine development and $11.2 million for biosecurity efforts.

No one knows, though, how bad PEDv will be this year. Forshey expects the industry to lose 2.5
million more pigs when cold weather arrives. PEDv, like the flu, thrives in winter.

“Whether or not you want to admit it,” Burns said, “it’s going to get cold again, and we don’t
have a vaccine yet.”